The defense has rested in the case of Bixby et al., vs. KBR Inc. All that is left will be for the judge to instruct the jury and the lawyers to make their closing arguments. The jury will have the case early afternoon on Halloween.

A few notes from the afternoon, in descending order of importance.

1.) The medical expert called by KBR Inc., Dr. David Weill, a pulmonologist at Stanford University Medical Center, examined the medical histories of each of the 12 soldier-plaintiffs, dating from before, during and after their time in Iraq in 2003. In each case, he said, the symptoms the soldiers cite in the lawsuit -- symptoms such as reflux disease, asthma and a skin rash -- could not be associated with their service at Qarmat Ali. He said the symptoms included some pre-existing medical conditions, or weren't reported until long after the deployment -- too remote in time to be associated with exposure to hexavalent chromium nine years ago.

2.) Since Magistrate Judge Paul Papak has ruled that KBR Inc. remains as a defendant in this case, the soldiers' lawyers seek to introduce some information about the company's financial picture. That could be meaningful if the jury decides to award damages to the soldiers.

Interestingly, at least to (former) business wonks, the soldiers' lawyers and KBR's lawyers had very different ideas about what financial information should be included in the casefile. KBR said the most appropriate thing would be a one-line entry from the company's 10-k statement showing the company's net income, also loosely referred to as earnings, profits or the bottom line.

But the soldiers' lawyers say a better indicator of KBR's wealth is its balance sheet, which shows assets and liabilities. Such a document includes the value of property, equipment, receivables, goodwill and intangibles.

The judge saw it the soldiers' way, allowing a consolidated balance sheet and income statement.

(If you click this link from KBR's Investor's page, you can find the company's 10-k, which was filed in February. It show's KBR's net income in 2011 was $540 million. Its total assets were $5.67 billion.)

3.) And finally, the word "Boolean." It wasn't spoken in court, but lawyers made a point and counterpoint with Dr. Weill that turned on a Boolean search of medical literature. Medical professionals frequently use an online database called PubMed to search the universe of medical papers and research.

KBR's lawyer, Geoffrey Harrison, asked Weill if he'd ever heard the term "genetic transformation injury" before the current lawsuit. (The soldiers' medical expert, Dr. Arch Carson, said all 12 soldiers suffered "genetic transformation injury" from their exposure to sodium dichromate at Qarmat Ali.)

Weill said he had not. And he said he searched PubMed to look for it, but found nothing.

Upon cross-examination, the soldiers' lawyer, Mike Doyle, put PubMed on the digital screen and searched for the words "genetic," "transformation" and "injury" and immediately got 312 hits -- a result far different from Weill saying he found no references to the term.

But, in the final bit of evidence of the trial, Harrison called up PubMed and pointed out that Doyle's search of the database used Boolean operators, that is, terms like ALL, OR, AND and other joiners that broaden the online search to include any document that uses the words "genetic," "transformation" and "injury." When searched for using quotation marks, as a single term, there were no hits for "genetic transformation injury."

This may not be a point of great significance, but the larger point is that the soldiers' lawyers must prove to the jury that their clients suffered from Dr. Carson's diagnosed "genetic transformation injury" -- a term that isn't found in PubMed.

So bring on Halloween, when the judge will present a treat to the jurors -- the first legal case brought by Oregon military veterans against a defense contractor related to their presence at a plant contaminated by a carcinogenic compound in Iraq. It's been a long trip from Qarmat Ali in 2003 to a federal courtroom in Portland in 2012, but now here we are. Thanks, as always, for reading along.